Asylum Archive

Asylum archive is
directly concerned with the reality and trauma of life as an asylum seeker.
Asylum archive is based on my personal experience of being an asylum seeker and
living in direct provision hostels. Asylum archive originally started as a
coping mechanism while seeking political asylum in Ireland.
Asylum archive aims to
collaborate with asylum seekers, artists, cultural workers, sociologists, human
rights workers, social activists, theorists, and immigration lawyers, in the
process of creating a platform that deals with questions like exile and asylum,
displacement, war traumas, transnational migration, economic migration,
immigration policy.
The asylum system
functions as a closed and confined space far from the rest of society. It is
the other, the outside, and a ghetto. The direct provision hostels and their
residents don’t seem to have physicality. The rest of society is not to be
concerned about their existence.
Asylum archive is
taking visual samples of this reality.
Asylum archive is researching the possibility of
creating a site-specific space within one of the closed direct provision
hostels. The idea is that the archive will be available for a permanent rather
than a temporary period of time.
The archive has a
vital visual informative and educational perspective.
This is to help to
establish better relations and understanding around asylum issues.
In the book ‘Discipline
and Punish’ published in 1975, Michael Foucault describes that the disciplinary
punishment gives "professionals" (psychologists, programme
facilitators, parole officers, etc.) power over the prisoner, most notably in
that the prisoner's length of stay depends on the professionals' judgment.
Foucault compares modern society with Jeremy
Bentham's "Panopticon" design for prisons where a single guard can
watch over many prisoners while the guard remains unseen. (1)
Allan Sekula in his essay ‘The Body and the
Archive’ explains Bentham’s idea of Panopticon: ‘With Bentham the principle of
supervision takes on an explicit industrial capitalist character: his prisons
were to function as profit-making establishments, based on the private
contracting-out of convict labour.
For Foucault, ‘Panopticism’ provides the central
metaphor for modern disciplinary power based on isolation, individuation, and
supervision. (2)
Would this be the
case with the operation and structure of direct provision hostels?
In
the recent newspaper articles published in Ireland, the connection has been
drawn between the Magdalene laundries and direct provision hostels. The
government officials including the Minister for Justice have denied any
possible resemblance.
The similarity of
the historic suffering of the women in the Magdalene laundries echoes the
incarceration and exclusion that asylum seekers experience in Ireland today.http://www.asylumarchive.com/
Bibliography
1.Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1975
2.Allan Sekula, The body and the Archive, 1992

Asylum Apathy

Society has always
found it difficult to relate to minorities. From lack of knowledge follows
distrust and fear. The polarisation of various factions of society across
religious, racial and economic divides is rapidly growing. Into the second
anniversary of the Syrian war and a talk is starting in three minutes. The
auditorium is full with the gravely concerned, interested in change for the
betterment of Syria and its people. But where are the Syrians meant to go in
order to escape the flames and the strife? These poor people we see on our TV
screens...we hold solidarity with their plight! Speaker speak! Let us
know what we can do!!
But outside of the
debates and public discourse it’s a different attitude. Solidarity ends for
such people as soon as they start seeking refuge. The asylum minority. Apathy
begins and debates against are cooked up when faced with the critical
and physical human fallout of the disasters we’re so gravely concerned about.
At our borders the
victims are processed and catalogued by the Department of Justice. They are
then enclosed in ‘direct provision’ centres usually stationed outside of
urban areas, isolated locations away from the eyes of the general public. Out
of sight out of mind is the solution society has come up with; and all
accommodation needs are run at a profit just for good measure. So much for the
public debates and discourse.
For the regular Irish
person that ‘war refugee sort of thing has nothing to do with us here on our
fair Island.’ The victims are given an allowance that won’t lift them over
the financial restrictions of local travel or a coffee and a chat in ‘normal’
environments. Marginalised from the start, thus begins the long journey through
the hoops of the legal system, an entity more concerned with getting the asylum
seeker back on a plane out of Ireland than their immediate wellbeing. ‘You
mean there’s holding centres for people like this in Kerry, Cork, Limerick,
Sligo...? With families?’
The heaviest baggage
the person brings with them is the trauma of conflict and persecution. The
psychological fragments are sharp and tear through the mind, sleepless nights
and lost empty days. Nervous and physical breakdown sets in along with
loneliness and the loss of everything once taken for granted.
And all this time the
person is expected to defend themselves in interviews testing their
legitimacy...questions on country of origin, routes of escape, torture,
persecution, right to return, violence levels...are you legitimate, are you
real...the distrust of the welcoming authorities is on par with high comedy.’What level of violence
do they think is safe enough for me to return to!? Why don’t they just leave me
alone...leave me sleep...’Masrour has that
constant frown of agitation “I’ve been here 6 years now. I’m 25 years old,
nearly 26...” He sits at the canteen table, slumped in his chair, with
his old sports runners edging the table leg. Agitated at the sheer concept of
time....waiting...”I’ve got two good shirts, they hang in my room. I have to
air them as they smell sometimes with others sharing my room.” He is from
Kurdistan. I ask him how things are there.. He says it’s a mess, but recent
memories are of waiting here in this complex. He doesn’t really want to engage
in a conversation on Kurdistan, despite my curiosity. I find the concept of
spending the ‘best years of our life’s’ stuck in a glorified holding pin
to be very daunting. Terrifying. “You want to play a game of pool? We play it all the
time here. There’s nothing else really to do but shoot pool. What a shithole.”Ahlam is finding
it hard to adjust. ‘Those guys just hang around in groups all the time,
shouting out loud. My daughter finds it hard to focus. She has to study! I
can’t believe they make us live here like this. It is no place for a child.’ Coming
from a middle class background in Iraq, Ahlam recounts how her life was
relatively good before the invasion took place. ‘We used to go on holidays
to Beirut and go to the beach. The people there are so friendly, so welcoming.
Our family was happy then.’ Her husband is dead and she has not heard from
her son in weeks. Their house in Baghdad is now destroyed from warfare.
Memories start stirring emotions....tears well up in her eyes and her voice
shakes. “I miss the life we had. We have to go to Beirut again when all this
is over, the weather is fantastic...and the fruit...dates are so delicious!
Will you come to Beirut with us? When all this is over, it will be great.” Lost
in memories, the sadness is palpable; it brings a sick feeling to my stomach.Article co-written by
Eamonn Sheehy and Asylum Archive.